Who decides right and wrong?

What the Bible says

The Bible says neither that human beings decide what is good nor that God decides it on a whim. The standard of goodness is God himself. When a man addressed Jesus as "good teacher," Jesus answered:

No one is good except God alone.

Mark 10:18

The psalmist prays the same truth.

You are good, and You do what is good; teach me Your statutes.

Psalm 119:68

God does good because he is good, and what he teaches comes out of who he is. The creation story points the same way. God looks at what he has made and calls it "very good" (Genesis 1:31). Goodness is the order God built into the world, not a verdict people added later.

Does that mean people who do not know God cannot know right from wrong? Paul says no.

Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law.

Romans 2:14

So they show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts either accusing or defending them

Romans 2:15

People who never received a written law still know something of right and wrong, because an inner voice accuses and defends. This is the biblical root of the moral argument: a standard we did not invent points, Christians say, to the one who wrote it on us.

But that voice can be dulled. So God gave Israel the Ten Commandments. They open not with an order but with a statement of relationship: "I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt" (Exodus 20:2). Then come the bans on murder, adultery, theft and false witness. Jesus gathered the whole law into two commands.

Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.

Matthew 22:37

Love your neighbor as yourself.

Matthew 22:39

Paul reaches the same conclusion: "Love does no wrong to its neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law" (Romans 13:10). The standard of right is not a cold list of rules. It is a life shaped by the character of the God who is love (1 John 4:8).

The church's witness

The church has long held that at Sinai God did not invent a morality from nothing but restored what was already written on human hearts. Commenting on Exodus 20, Matthew Henry writes:

This law God had given to man before; it was written in his heart; but sin so defaced it, that it was necessary to revive the knowledge of it.

Matthew Henry

On Romans 2 he adds that "Conscience is a witness, and first or last will bear witness" Matthew Henry. Conscience is a real witness, but a damaged one, so the church has respected it while teaching that it is not enough alone.

Philosophy has a classic form of the question. Plato's Euthyphro asks whether the holy is loved by the gods because it is holy, or is holy because it is loved Plato, Euthyphro 10a. Today it is usually put this way: is something good because God commands it, or does he command it because it is good? If the first, goodness looks like divine whim. If the second, goodness seems to stand above God as a standard he must obey. The classical Christian answer takes neither horn. Goodness is not a rule outside God, nor an arbitrary decision, but God's own unchanging nature, and his commands flow from it. That is why God cannot command cruelty for its own sake or call it good. The answer is rooted in the teaching of Augustine and Thomas Aquinas that God does not merely have goodness but is goodness itself. Traditions differ in emphasis: some stress the sovereignty of God's will and command, others the order built into the nature he made. All agree that the root of goodness is God.

In the original languages

The Hebrew tov (טוֹב) is the common word for "good." It is what God says about his work in Genesis 1. Micah uses it to say what a good life looks like.

He has shown you, O man, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you but to act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God?

Micah 6:8

Goodness here is a way of life, not a theory.

The New Testament word for conscience, syneidesis (συνείδησις), is built from "knowing together." It is knowing along with oneself and, as Christians read it, along with the God who knows us. When conscience accuses us, we can take that as a sign that something higher than our own preferences is speaking.

Common objections

"Morality is a product of evolution." This is a serious objection. Many scientists accept that cooperative groups survived better, so we came to feel the pull of helping and the dislike of cheating. Christians differ over evolution, and this essay does not settle that. But how a moral sense arose is a different question from whether the morality is true. Our ability to do arithmetic presumably also arose because it helped survival, yet 2 + 2 = 4 is not false for that reason. In the other direction, a feeling's usefulness for survival does not make it right. If morality is only a feeling that kept our ancestors alive, then "slavery is wrong" means no more than "I dislike it." Yet we do not think that, and cannot live as if we did. Christians hold that if morality is real, God's character is its most natural ground. Many philosophers who do not believe in God also hold that moral truths are real, so this is a question of the better explanation, not of proof.

"Moral views differ across cultures." They do, and some differences are deep. But looking only at differences misses what is shared. Many scholars note how hard it is to find a culture that praised betraying one's own people or perjury as virtues. More telling is the moral reformer. If we think those who said their own society's customs were wrong were right, we already believe in a standard above any culture. The Bible explains the differences this way: conscience exists but has been clouded by sin, so we need plain revelation. Scripture sums up one dark age like this: "everyone did what was right in his own eyes" (Judges 21:25).

"Religious people have done evil in God's name, and atheists can be good." Both are true. Many who do not believe in God care for neighbors and live honestly, which is just what Romans 2 describes. Christians see this as a sign of the image of God in every person (Genesis 1:27). The church's record of wrongs done in God's name is also undeniable. But that shows the failure of people who fall short of the standard, not that the standard is false. The Bible says so first (Romans 3:23), and the warning "Woe to those who call evil good and good evil" was spoken to God's own people (Isaiah 5:20).

Going further

The question of who decides right and wrong turns out to be a question about what goodness looks like. The Bible's answer is that goodness is not a theory but a person. So Christian ethics is less about memorizing rules than about getting to know him. And because all of us fall short of it, the story ends not in condemnation but in grace (What is sin?).

You might ask yourself: Have I ever felt that something was simply wrong? Where do I think that conviction came from? If goodness is God's character, what is one thing in my life that would change?

To read further, see What is love?, Do Christians have to keep the Old Testament law? and What is truth?.